The WHO and UNICEF-led Hand Hygiene for All Initiative aims at ensuring implementation for WHO's global recommendations on hand hygiene to prevent and control COVID-19 pandemic, and hand hygiene improvement sustainability in countries as a mainstay of...n> wider infection prevention and control (IPC) and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) efforts.
But how can hand hygiene implementation be successful? By implementing strategies and approaches proven through the successes of the WHO Save Lives: Clean Your Hands campaign and fostering integration between hand hygiene and WASH improvements. This brief draws on learning from legacy work and the current evidence based and summarizes how joint action and collaboration are essential for successful strategies, in the context of the COVID-19 response and beyond
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Lessons from three African Countries.
Achieving Health for All, and in particular universal health coverage (UHC), will not happen without fully functioning basic water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services in all health care facilities. Such services are needed to provide quality care, ensure ad...herence to infection prevention and control (IPC) norms and standards and guarantee that facilities are able to provide environments that respect the dignity and human rights of all care seekers, especially mothers, newborns and children. WHO undertook a series of national situational analyses in three countries (Ghana, Ethiopia and Rwanda) to understand current barriers to change, accountability structures and measures to strengthen WASH in health care facilities and more broadly, the quality of health service delivery.
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The early prevention project “Strong together!” supports refugee parents and their young children (0–4 years) in Berlin, Germany. It aims to mitigate the transmission of trauma to the generati...on born in exile. For refugee families who have only recently arrived in Germany, the COVID‐19 pandemic poses a particularly great challenge. Not only are they confronted with numerous challenges in respect to rebuilding their lives in Germany after fleeing war and persecution, but are also vulnerable to conscious and unconscious anxieties, fantasies, and conflicts evoked by the pandemic and the threat it poses to their lives. This was observed in the context of the mother–child groups of “Strong together!”
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As the world recovers from the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic and reflects on lessons learnt from failure of global public health systems to contain the global outbreak ...hlight medbox">of SARS-CoV-2, new infectious disease threats, caused by movement of people globally, remain omnipresent, and repeated calls for more proactive action go unheeded. This is aptly shown by the unprecedented and unexpected outbreaks of human monkeypox cases and clusters since May 7, 2022, across Europe, the Americas, and Australia,
which yet again, have taken global public authorities by surprise.
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The African Regional Convening of the Global Initiative to Support Parents (GISP) stimulated the interest or engagement of almost 1500 individuals from 742 unique organizations in the fields ...lass="attribute-to-highlight medbox">of health, education, social welfare, women’s affairs, early childhood, water and sanitation, mental health, violence prevention, innovative finance, climate, and many others. The convening united representatives across governments, civil society organizations, programme implementers, philanthropies, multilateral organizations, bilateral funders, private companies, universities, schools and day care centres, and hospitals around the common cause of supporting parents and caregivers.
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Humanitarian emergencies result in a breakdown of critical health-care services and often make vulnerable communities dependent on external agencies for care. In resource-constrained settings, this may occur against a backdrop ...-to-highlight medbox">of extreme poverty, malnutrition, insecurity, low literacy and poor infrastructure. Under these circumstances, providing food, water and shelter and limiting communicable disease outbreaks become primary concerns. Where effective and safe vaccines are available to mitigate the risk of disease outbreaks, their potential deployment is a key consideration in meeting emergency health needs. Ethical considerations are crucial when deciding on vaccine deployment. Allocation of vaccines in short supply, target groups, delivery strategies, surveillance and research during acute humanitarian emergencies all involve ethical considerations that often arise from the tension between individual and common good. The authors lay out the ethical issues that policy-makers need to bear in mind when considering the deployment of mass vaccination during humanitarian emergencies, including beneficence (duty of care and the rule of rescue), non-maleficence, autonomy and consent, and distributive and procedural justice
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Birth defect has been an emerging major cause of child mortality in the region. Scarcity of the birth defects information hampers policy decisions and control measures at national level. In order to... create evidence for action for birth defects prevention in the region, WHO-SEARO in collaboration with CDC, USA has developed and launched a regional electronic database on birth defects. This surveillance database allows data collection on newborn health, birth defects and stillbirths cases and provides real time information at hospitals and national level.
Training of the hospital health staffs and data managers in the birth defects surveillance network; at regional, national and at hospital levels is recognized as essential for expansion of this database and to assure quality of data. A two days training module for hospital based birth defects surveillance was developed using a guide for operation and facilitator guide.
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The brief concludes that sustaining the continuity of EHS requires policies that ensure a whole-society and systems strengthening approach. This involves increased health care investment, community engagement, ...box">disease control regulations, and multisector approaches to improve resilience, EHS quality, and equity.
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Addressing comorbidities and risk factors for TB is a crucial component of Pillar one of the End TB Strategy, which focuses on integrated patient-centred care and ... medbox">prevention, including action on TB and comorbidities. The Framework for collaborative action on TB and comorbidities aims to support countries in the evidence-informed introduction and scale-up of holistic people-centred services for TB, comorbidities and health-related risk factors, with the goal of comprehensively addressing TB and other co-existing health conditions. It should be used in conjunction with relevant WHO guidelines. The Framework is intended for use by people working in ministries of health, other relevant line-ministries, policymakers, international technical and funding organizations, researchers, nongovernmental and civil society organizations, as well as primary care workers, specialist health practitioners, and community health workers who support the response to TB and comorbidities in both the public and private sectors.
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This brief advocacy document highlights the burden, risks and prevention of injuries and violence, which took the lives of 4.4 million people in 20...19 and constitute 8% of all deaths. Among the injury-related causes of death include road traffic crashes, drowning, falls, burns, poisoning and violence against oneself or others. For people age 5-29 years, three of the top five causes of death are injury-related, including road traffic injuries, homicide, and suicide. Injuries and violence are not evenly distributed across or within countries – some people are more vulnerable than others depending on the conditions in which they are born, grow, work, live and age; in general, being young, male and of low socioeconomic status all increase the risk of injury. This document, aimed at public health professionals; injury prevention researchers, practitioners and advocates; and donors, draws attention to specific strategies based on sound scientific evidence that are effective and cost-effective at preventing injuries and violence; it is critical that these strategies are more widely implemented.
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In the Indian state of Bihar, visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is a major public health issue that has been aggravated by the rising incidence of new Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections. In end...emic areas, the risk of VL infections in patients living with HIV (PLHIV) is higher. It is important to investigate the disease-related knowledge, attitude, and practices (KAP) of PLHIV in Bihar in order to monitor HIV/VL co-infection. Adequate knowledge, a positive attitude, and good practices for VL control are essential to stamp out the disease. This study investigated the KAP towards VL in HIV patients attending antiretroviral therapy (ART) clinic at ICMR-RMRIMS, Patna.
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Little is known about the patterns of development assistance (DA) for each component of reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health (RMNCAH) in conflict-affected countries nor about... the DA allocation in relation to the burden of disease
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Diarrhea is one of the world’s leading causes of child illness and death, and rotavirus is the most common cause of severe diarrhea. Yet it can b...e prevented and treated. There is a vaccine. And while hundreds of thousands of children in India will gain access to rotavirus vaccines -part of a national introduction marking Asia’s largest so far -millions of children globally still lack access. This new report from the Rota Council summarizes the latest evidence on rotavirus disease and vaccines and identifies 21 recommendations for stakeholders to scale up coverage and prevent hundreds of thousands of child deaths annually.
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People younger than 20 years comprise 35% of the global population and 40% of the global population of least-developed nations. The number ...ass="attribute-to-highlight medbox">of children - neonates, infants, children, and adolescents up to 19 years of age - who need pediatric palliative care (PPC) each year may be as high as 21 million. Another study found that almost 2.5 million children die each year with serious health related suffering and that more than 98% of these children are in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) (3). While estimates differ, there is no doubt that there is an enormous need for prevention and relief of suffering among children - for PPC.
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22 July 2022. This document summarizes current WHO guidance for public health surveillance of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in humans caused by infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome... coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).
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This policy brief examines the implications of COVID-19 and the government’s preventative measure for political stability,9 especially in the short to medium term. It argues that in the short term the di...sease and the preventative measures could make the country less vulnerable to organised political violence and more vulnerable to riots. In the medium and long term, however, vulnerability to both types of violence could increase, depending on the capacity of political forces to instigate and manage conflict and on their willingness to work together.
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Ethiopia has seen high economic growth over the last decade, but remains a poor country with a high burden of disease. It has made considerable health gains in recent years, mainly by ...having health policies that focus on extending primary healthcare, using health extension workers. It has made good use of existing resources,but has a low health expenditure (of around US$21 per capita, and totalling 4per centof GDP). It has a federal system with devolved healthcare financing, whereby block grants are allocated to sectors at regional and woreda(district) level. The challenge now,with the epidemiological transition (and a sense that the ‘low-hanging fruits’have already been gathered in relation to public health), is how Ethiopia, still poor, continuesto invest in health improvements?Human resources for health (HRH) are a critical pillar within any health system –the health staff combine inputs to provide the services, thus affecting how all other resources are used, and they make frontline (and back-office) decisions thatare importantdeterminants of servicequality,effectiveness and equity. HRH is usually the most resource-intensive element within the health system –commonly absorbing 50–70per centof public expenditure onhealth, although the proportions are very varied by individual countries and across regions. As they are commonly part of the public administration, reforms to HRH are also part of a complex political economy in most countries.Assessing value for money (VfM) in relation to HRH is correspondingly complex;across the value chain, manyfactors influence the conversion of inputs into outputs and outcomes (see Figure 1).A more detailed description of the HRH value chain can be found in Annex1.
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In May the Sixty-sixth World Health Assembly adopted resolution WHA66.12 (1) on 17 neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). Among other measures, the resolution urges Member States to:
• ensure country ownership ...dbox">of prevention, control, elimination and eradication programmes;
• expand and implement interventions and advocate for predictable, long-term international financing for activities related to control and capacity strengthening;
• integrate control programmes into primary health-care services and existing programmes;
• ensure optimal programme management and implementation;
• achieve and maintain universal access to interventions and reach the targets of the roadmap.
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What Children Should Know About Bilharzia; Educational Comic. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: This document was made possible through a financial grant from Merck, Germany. In 2007, Merck entered into a partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO) to combat schistosomiasis in school children on the African... continent. In the medium term, Merck will donate 250 million tablets of Cesol 600 containing the active ingredient praziquantel. Merck will maintain its efforts until the disease has been eliminated in Africa.
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To implement the set of recommendations on the marketing of foods and non-alcoholic beverages to children
With the growing obesity crisis among children, WHO and other public health advocates a...nd consumer groups have called for restrictions on advertising of ‘unhealthy foods’ high in salt, sugar and fat to children. Each day, children in the South East Asia Region are exposed to large volume of marketing of unhealthy foods that may influence children’s food preferences and consumption patterns and is associated with childhood overweight and obesity.
The definition of ‘unhealthy’ is debatable, and therefore, an objective method of describing foods as healthy or unhealthy is needed. A nutrient profile model does just that and therefore, a nutrition profile model for South East Asia was developed. The model is consistent with international guidance for preventing chronic disease and is a simple system with clear cut-offs for defining which foods are not suitable for advertising to children.
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